I was there as 20% of a panel speaking on creating funny web content. My fellow panelists, left-to-right:

Jeff Rubin, Executive Editor, CollegeHumor (collegehumor.com)
Mark Malkoff, comedian and filmmaker, formerly of "The Colbert Report" (markmalkoff.com)
John Hargrave (panel leader) Zug.com
Myself, Rob Cockerham, (cockeyed.com)
Kris Wilson, founder, Cyanide & Happiness (explosm.net) (not pictured)



We chatted for about 30 minutes and John laid out an outline for the one hour event.

We were all pretty funny people, but I hope the audience wasn't expecting an hour of non-stop laughs. We were giving advice on building successful funny content and promoting it.

We were each planning to speak for 2 minutes total on three bullet points, so none of us needed a whole lot of planning before we took the stage.
This was a nice soft entry into public speaking for me.

These were my three points:

1. The title is by far the most important thing
2. Make the audience feel smart & useful
3. Nurture relationships with link-giving gatekeepers

Thanks Paul Kafasis for volunteering to take the photos!

 We did introductions, a short video, the bullet points, a couple of questions from John, and finally the audience questions.

John asked about our "big break", techniques for marketing new articles, projects that weren't good enough to post, and how often should a comedy site should release new material.

I was excited to get to the audience questions. I'm obviously very comfortable talking about myself, so I knew answering questions would be easier than a monologue.

The hour passed in about 20 minutes. At the end, John presented the trophy for the "Funniest Person on the Web 2010".

Kris Wilson! Cyanide & Happiness (explosm.net)

The trophy was a beautiful urn, which John promptly filled with a #10 can of nacho cheese.

John also brought chips.

Kris with trophy aloft. Congratulations you son of a bitch!

With our panel finished, I hung out for a while, meeting a few people from the audience and chatting more with my internet contemporaries.

I made plans to hang out later with John, Kris and Rob DenBleyker (also from Cyanide and Happiness).

Picture: The Legos.

On the way upstairs to hear John's interview, we ran into Drew Curtis from Fark.

He was surprisingly good at charades.

John interviewing Kris and Rob. With cheese-filled trophy.

A lot of people at SXSW, like hundreds of people, were sitting down, working on their laptops. But here was a rare sight, a black woman the xo laptop!

Please continue reading page 4 of my visit to SXSW 2010.

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